Lysix

did hellfire ramparts and blood furnace last night (first time and second time). the blood furnace group concisted of me, my girlfriend and a longtime WoW friend i met by chance in the arena. he brought along two people he met ingame the other day, so it was supposedly a great group. i think about halfway through, the orc shaman, our supposed healer, slacked and let people die or didnt heal them until they were on seriously low health (at one point he watched everyone die and let off the excuse "i was drinking"). he then began to accuse ME of making him "heal like im the solo healer of an onyxia raid" to his exact words. he then insulted my role as a dps dealer, which was then crushed as the dps chart showed me in the middle, with two others below me.eventually, i left, because both of them just continued to have a go at me. this proves two things;1) Shamen are complete and utter arrogant fucks (save mdx). I'm sorry, but every shaman i party with some shit like this ALWAYS happens. earlier on in ramparts, the shaman constantly overaggroed everything, and when asked to run to his corpse like the rest of us, left the party.2)Nobody in this game knows how to heal except me and my other game-friend. which is why from now, im forcing myself to heal because frankly i cant trust a stranger with the job anymore.

Unless they're specced specifically for healing, shamans can't heal for shit. When I was levelling up my shaman (part enhancement (dual-wield), part resto (healing)) I managed to get into two groups for Hellfire Citadel (two completely separate occasions, one Ramparts, one Blood Furnace). For the Furnace run I got a group of guys higher level than me and already with a healer so I took a secondary DPS role. Despite being three levels down from the next guy up I managed second on the DPS meters and earned a lot of praise for my totem use. But for Ramparts (the next day) I was expected to be healer, and I had a really tough time, just managed to get us through, but it was quite a close call at the last boss.

Lysix

as far as i know, the shaman was resto spec with the earth sheild, and was hitting some nice heals from time to time. but his overall attitude and attention towards our health was amazingly poor. i didn't feel safe, and i found myself shifting out of shadow form to heal myself most of the time. i just don't like this whole "oh we can do everything" viewpoint they seem to have. sure, they can do most things, but most players never seem to do them all that well.

True. The reason they probably play the class is because of the versatility, but an awful lot of players are unable of coping with multiple roles as much as they think they can. Sadly, a n00b player playing a rogue or mage can get away with it most of the time but one playing a much more thought-requiring role, like a warrior, priest, shaman or pally, are more obvious, because of their mistakes.

(I just had to add "mage" to Firefox's dictionary add-on, how lame is that?)

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Lysix

i agree with you there. dps classes can get away with everything just because all they have to do is deal damage. ive always preferred playing the more vital roles because i feel i get more responsibility and enjoyment out of it. like when i was dps'ing, i felt useless, because a party can go without the damage. but a healer, or a tank have important places and people rely on them.

some people ask why people play healers, and that the whole whack-a-mole concept bores them. sure, its essentially clicking someone or their name and pressing another button, but then sometimes you have to think "who needs to be healed now? who can wait? who should i shield whilst i save someone else?". like when the party survive after a fight that was unexpected or more tough than previously thought; when its over and i see everyones finished at (almost) full health, i get a kick out of it because i saved everyones ass. [

some people ask why people play healers, and that the whole whack-a-mole concept bores them. sure, its essentially clicking someone or their name and pressing another button, but then sometimes you have to think "who needs to be healed now? who can wait? who should i shield whilst i save someone else?". like when the party survive after a fight that was unexpected or more tough than previously thought; when its over and i see everyones finished at (almost) full health, i get a kick out of it because i saved everyones ass. [

Aye. Choosing a friendly target, deciding which type of heal or shield is most appropriate under their conditions and the state of the rest of the party are all vital decisions and I also found it enjoyable to play (I had a spirit-damage build on my priest so I was better able to switch to healing when necessary). Essentially, making those choices is the same as a DPS class choosing their enemy target and picking which set of abilities would be best to use on that type of enemy - whether it's best to stun, debilitate, DoT or simply nuke the crap out of them. Choose a target, click an ability: there's not really much difference.